Uprooted Palestinians are at the heart of the conflict in the M.E Palestinians uprooted by force of arms. Yet faced immense difficulties have survived, kept alive their history and culture, passed keys of family homes in occupied Palestine from one generation to the next.

Saturday, 5 February 2011

Seeking desperately to cling to power in the face of mounting street pressure, the Egyptian regime of Husni Mubarak reportedly deployed thousands of paid thugs in an effort to assault thousands of demonstrators fed up with the Mubarak regime's tyranny and demanding his ouster.

The thugs, known in Arabic as Baltajiya, threw rocks at protesters, hoping to get them to flee. Others carried daggers, swords and other sharp objects with which they either stabbed or sought to intimidate resilient demonstrators at the Tahrir square in the heart of Cairo. Some of the thugs appeared mounting horses and even camels and attempting to trample on demonstrators. Fire bombs were heavily used by the Baltajiya stationed at neighboring rooftops against the protesters. Eventually, live bullets were fired into the huge crowd, with several people getting killed and hundreds injured.

The baltajiya (plural of Baltaji) are young, uneducated, unemployed and violence-prone young men recruited by the regime or the ruling National Party for the purpose of intimidating and terrorizing political opponents, falsifying elections and holding "show demonstrations" in support of the regime whenever the need arises.

The baltajiya played a pivotal role in rigging and falsifying recent elections in Egypt which were nearly completely "won" by Mubarak's al-Hizbel Watani.

This is the behavior of the regime which the United States and other western powers have tended, maintained, and cared for over 30 years in return for safeguarding their interests in this volatile region. We are essentially talking about 30 years of dictatorship, repression, corruption and absence of basic human rights and civil liberties.

It is an evil regime that goes beyond falsifying elections and raping the people's will; it is a regime that doesn't even flinch from killing its own people in order to stay in power.

According to confirmed and reliable reports from Cairo, the regime's paid thugs committed every conceivable crime against the citizens of Cairo and the country as a whole, all for the purpose of intimidating protesters and blaming crimes on the opposition to the tyrannical regime.

They broke into private homes, assaulted ordinary people, robbed businesses and shops, and set many buildings on fire. Even the Central Egyptian Museum, which contains records of 6000 years of Egyptian civilization, was not spared the savagery of the thugs who sought to set it on fire in order to give the security forces, especially the army, an alibi to declare a national emergency and crush the anti-Mubarak protests once and for all.

So what words would accurately describe such a regime which in order to stay in power, it has resorted to the unthinkable, namely setting Egypt itself on fire and murdering its sons and daughters? Does a regime change in Egypt have to be at the expense of the destruction and burning of the country?

Muhammed Baradei, a prominent opposition leader, rightly described the manner in which the Mubarak regime sought to thwart the revolution in Egypt as "criminal tactics by a criminal regime."

A western journalist who had covered the Iranian revolution, the Romanian revolution and several other revolutions in Eastern Europe and South America against autocratic regimes said the following words, describing the utter depravity of the Egyptian regime's behavior toward protesters.

"I have covered several revolutions worldwide where pro-regime forces employed many ugly ways and means to intimidate the revolutionaries; but I never witnessed this level of depravity, gangsterism and thuggishness as we are witnessing in Egypt today."

There is no doubt that the Egyptian regime is behaving with total disrespect and disregard for the Egyptian people who want to transform Egypt from a dictatorship into a democracy, and from a country that looks down on its citizens to one that shows respect for them.

In the final analysis, the real indicator of democracy in any country is when the government starts fearing the people. However, when the people fear the government and the government contemptuously overlooks and ignores the people's concerns, it means dictatorship and tyranny is having the day.

We don't know what kind of regime would eventually assume power in Egypt, the strongest and most populous Arab nation. But we are hopeful that the end game will see the disappearance of this thuggish regime which for the sake of pleasing and appeasing Israel and its friends in North America and Europe is willing to savage, persecute and even kill its own people.

The Egyptian people are really thoroughly fed-up with this tyrannical regime and will not take it any more. Thirty years of Mubarak's corruption, repression, and lies have convinced nearly every Egyptian that Mubarak must go and a new honorable Egypt must be enabled to emerge from the ruins of the current rotten dictatorship.

Although widely considered the navel of despotism in the Arab world, the Egyptian regime is by no means the main oasis of authoritarianism in the Arab region. With the rare exception of Lebanon, nearly all other Arab regimes are tyrannical and corrupt; with each having a decadent rotten king or a president-for-life presiding over the country, who may well be grooming his son to succeed him as already happened in Morocco, Syria, Jordan, and the Arabian Gulf Sheikhdoms and Emirates and as was widely expected to happen, at least until recently, in countries such as Egypt, Libya and Yemen.

But in a certain sense, the Egyptian regime served as the gravity center for all these tyrannical regimes, mainly due to the traditional political and cultural status Egypt has in the Arab region ever since the 1952 revolution when a group of Egyptian officers, the Free Officers, headed by Gamal Abdul Nasser, overthrew the monarchy of King Farouk.

This is why one should be hopeful that a genuine transformation toward a regime that is more answerable to the masses would play a certain domino effect in the Arab region and could lead to true and lasting democratization.

Sadly, there are manifestly racist and fascist centers of power in the West that constantly urge governments there to keep up backing and maintaining dictatorial regimes in the Arab region. Their rationale is that these regimes serve to keep the Islamists at bay. But this is a spurious rationale and faulty argument at the very best, since the continued backing of these tyrannical regimes only contributes to the deepening of hatred of the west among hundreds of millions of Muslims around the globe. Eventually, this short-sighted policy leads to more instability, more extremism and more strategic losses for the west in this vital region.

Besides, there is no evidence supporting the claim that with Sunni Islamists in power in some Arab countries, the Arab world will become irremediably hostile or inimical to legitimate western interests whether in the economic or political spheres.

This is not to say though that an Islamist or quasi-Islamist Middle East wouldn't seek to regain its lost honor, dignity and independence, long usurped by western powers mainly through the installment in power of local agents such as reigning kings, emirs, sheikhs and presidents-for-life in the Arab world.

In any case, the Arabs, even the more feared Iranians, are not really inherently hostile to the West.

At the end of the day, Muslims, including the so-called Islamists only want to be treated with respect.

Paul J. Balles comments on the USA’s ambivalent line on the people’s revolution in Egypt. He argues that although the administration has a growing fear that a government hostile to Washington could gain control Egypt, “the unspoken fear is that American arms manufacturers will lose a reliable customer".

“The military was greeted warmly on the streets of Cairo. Crowds roared with approval as one soldier was carried through Tahrir Square today holding a flower in his hand,” reports Democracy Now! senior producer Sharif Abdel Kouddous.

He speaks of "a great sense of pride that this is a leaderless movement organized by the people. A genuine popular revolt. It was not organized by opposition movements, though they have now joined the protesters in Tahrir."

According to Abdel Kouddous, "The Muslim Brotherhood was out in full force today. At one point they began chanting “Allah Akbar” only to be drowned out by much louder chants of “Muslim, Christian, we are all Egyptian.”

What he describes, reflected in the TV coverage, is truly a “people’s revolution”. Will it play out that way? So far, the main concern of the protesters has been to get rid of Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s “president”-cum-dictator for the past 30 years.

The US has kept Mubarak in power, giving his regime 1.5 billion dollars in aid last year – mainly because he supported America’s pro-Israel policies, especially by helping Israel to maintain its stranglehold on Gaza.

Egypt has been the number-two recipient (after Israel) of US foreign aid. In both 2009 and 2010, the economic aid amounted to 250 million dollars while military aid reached 1.3 billion dollars.

US military aid to Egypt has been spent primarily on strengthening the regime’s “domestic security” and its ability to confront popular movements.

In a report for the Carnegie Foundation on US aid to Egypt, Ahmad al-Sayed El-Naggar asks: "Why don’t Egyptians notice the role of American aid to their country? The simple answer is that US economic aid to Egypt, which amounted to 455 million dollars in 2007, translated to only 6 dollars per capita.”

It was even less in 2010 when the total economic aid of 200 million dollars could provide less than 3 dollars per capita income. The people have suffered poverty while Mubarak supported his army and the US military-industrial complex.

The US has no reason to begrudge the amounts of military aid to Egypt. Much of it goes back to American defence contractors. Lockheed Martin received a 213 million contract for 20 new F-16s for Egypt in March 2010, boasted the company on its website.

BAE Systems, General Dynamics, General Electric, Raytheon and Lockheed Martin have all done business with the Egyptian government, selling tanks, fighter jets, howitzers and radar arrays to its military.

Meanwhile, half the people of Egypt live on less than 2 dollars a day. Is it any wonder that they have taken to the streets in protest?

When the tanks rolled into Cairo, some protesters climbed on them to a friendly reception by the soldiers. A couple of noisy fighter jets swooped threateningly overhead, but the protesters and the army remained friendly. Throughout the day people chanted: “The people, the army: one hand.”

That wasn’t the case when the police and the security forces threw tear gas canisters with labels “Made in America” into the crowds. The security police have represented much of what the Egyptian people have come to hate about Mubarak.

Meanwhile, the US administration has been waffling when asked whether they support the Egyptian public or Mubarak.

Hillary Clinton, US Secretary of State, stressed that Egypt's future lies in the hands of its people, hewing to the administration line of refusing to take sides publicly.

However, the administration has a growing fear that a government hostile to the US could gain control of such a large and important Arab nation.

The unspoken fear is that American arms manufacturers will lose a reliable customer.

The coverage of Egyptian uprising in the TV Channels across US have been criticised for being both pessimistic and superficial. Since the pro-democracy protests began, the mainstream American media has focused sharply on what it all means for the U.S. and its allies in the region.

CAIRO, (PIC)-- Senior Egyptian writer Mohamed Hassanein Heikal said the Egyptian revolution restored the spirit of Egyptian nationality and shook the pillars of President Mubarak's regime.

He warned attempts were being made to bury the "noble revolution".

The people voiced their word on Tuesday's referendum, turning the page on the existing regime for good, despite attempts to circumvent the people's will by suggesting the regime could achieve in six months what it failed to do over the last thirty years, Heikal said in an interview with Al-Jazeera.

Mubarak offered a list of concessions to protesters on Tuesday, including a promise not to run in coming elections.

Heikal, whose commentary on Arab affairs has been well-received for the past fifty years, described protesters gathered in Tahrir Square in central Cairo as "an embodiment of Egypt's pride", adding "they are the noblest and most beautiful the country has borne."

They are "the people's pride and dream," he said.

When Egyptians were asked to express their anger on Tuesday, some seven million citizens across Egypt responded and voiced their word in an unparalleled referendum, he went on to say.

He said the message did not ring in Egypt and the Arab world alone, but it strongly echoed across the entire planet until it was received and grasped.

Hillary Clinton said the transition process in Egypt should be transparent and inclusive.

The US secretary of state Hillary Clinton today signalled how far the US has swung its support behind vice-president Omar Suleiman and the transition process he is leading in Egypt.

Clinton was speaking at a security conference in Munich today, where the watchword on Egypt was the need for orderly transition.

In her most striking remarks, the US secretary of state said: "There are forces at work in any society, particularly one that is facing these kind of challenges, that will try to derail or overtake the process to pursue their own agenda, which is why I think it's important to follow the transition process announced by the Egyptian government, actually headed by vice-president Omar Suleiman."

She was presumably referring ito Suleiman's leadership of the transition rather than the government, but US officials have told their European colleagues that they view Suleiman as increasingly in control.

Clinton went on to say the transition should be transparent and inclusive, while setting out "concrete steps", moving towards orderly elections in September. She listed with approval the steps the Egyptian government had taken so far.

"President Mubarak has announced he will not stand for re-election nor will his son … He has given a clear message to his government to lead and support this process of transition," Clinton said.
"That is what the government has said it is trying to do, that is what we are supporting, and hope to see it move as orderly but as expeditiously as possible under the circumstances."

David Cameron and the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, speaking at the same conference, echoed the call for an orderly transition and cautioned against early elections.

But Cameron denied there was a trade-off between the speed of reform and stability.

"There is no stability in Egypt. We need change, reform and transition to get stability," the prime minister said. "The longer that is put off, the more likely we are to get an Egypt that we wouldn't welcome."

British officials said they were encouraged by the developments of the past 24 hours, pointing to the role of the army in preventing attacks on the demonstrators and the opening of a dialogue between Suleiman and opposition groups.

"It does have to be led by the Egyptian government but we do need a road map," one official said.

Stuart Littlewood views the deceitfulness, double-talk, vacuousness and lack of transparency that pervade the statements and actions of the United States, Israel, the UK and their quisling outfit in the occupied Palestinian territories, Fatah.

A recent article by Nima Shirazi, “How to Say Nothing without Really Trying”, nicely exposed the drivel spouted by US State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley in his attempt to block a draft United Nations Security Council resolution criticizing Israel's settlement building. And it reminded us of the sharp political observations of that remarkable Victorian writer, Charles Dickens.

To illustrate his point Shirazi selected this quote:

It is true that How not to do it was the great study and object of all public departments and professional politicians all round the Circumlocution Office." (Charles Dickens, Little Dorritt, Chapter10)

Dickens was able to anticipate, 150 years ahead of his time, the gobbledygook uttered by Western leaders like Clinton, Obama, Blair, Brown and now Cameron solemnly pledging peace in the Middle East while pursuing behind-scenes policies to achieve the exact opposite, in order to perpetuate the conflict for Israel’s benefit.

In “The Circumlocution Office” Dickens wrote:

It is true that every new premier and every new government, coming in because they had upheld a certain thing as necessary to be done, were no sooner come in than they applied their utmost faculties to discovering How not to do it. It is true that from the moment when a general election was over, every returned man who had been raving on hustings because it hadn’t been done, and who had been asking the friends of the honourable gentleman in the opposite interest on pain of impeachment to tell him why it hadn’t been done, and who had been asserting that it must be done, and who had been pledging himself that it should be done, began to devise, How it was not to be done.

Keeping Gaza on the brink of economic collapse

Circumlocution is a posh word for talking bollox. The British Foreign Office has been specially trained in circumlocution.

"We are encouraged by the recent decision by the Israeli government to facilitate exports out of Gaza,” said Foreign Office minister and Israel admirer Alistair Burt last month, adding:

It is certainly important that this leads to a positive change on the ground. We look forward to working with Israel to achieve this through the resumption of access for Gaza exports to all their traditional markets, and helping achieve Israel's stated target of reaching pre-summer 2007 export levels by the middle of next year. We will continue to work closely with EU partners to press for further progress in Gaza.

Note that it's Israel's totally inadequate target for Gaza's exports that matters to the minister, rather than the Gazans’. And everyone knows by now that Israel's policy – and Britain’s, thanks to the “unbreakable bond” – is to keep Gaza on the brink of economic collapse.

Back in June, Burt was writing:

It has long been the view of the government that restrictions on Gaza should be lifted; a view confirmed by UN Security Council Resolution 1860, which called for the sustained delivery of humanitarian aid and called on states to alleviate the humanitarian and economic situation persisting there. It is essential that there be unfettered access not only to meet the humanitarian needs of the people of Gaza, but to enable the reconstruction of homes and livelihoods and permit trade to take place.

“Unfettered access” sounds good, but these powerful words are meaningless.

This time last year the Foreign Office was saying: "The UK continues to put enormous effort into achieving a Middle East peace process, taking forward UNSCRs [United Nations Security Council resolutions] 1850 and 1860 to help achieve that aim." Six months earlier it had been saying:

We regularly remind the Israeli government of its obligations under international law on a variety of issues, including humanitarian access to Gaza as well as Israel's control of Gaza's waters and the effect it has on Gaza's fishing industry... The UK has been unequivocal in its calls to Israel to lessen restrictions at the Gaza crossings, allowing the legitimate flow of humanitarian aid, trade and reconstruction goods, and the movement of people. This is essential...

And in the aftermath of Israel’s “Cast Lead” blitzkrieg on Gaza the Foreign Office wrote to me: “The UK will continue to make the case for a comprehensive approach to resolving the conflicts in the Middle East, comprehensive in the sense that real peace will only come when Israel and the whole Arab world are at peace.”

How can you keep a straight face? The British government, where Israel is concerned, is “all mouth and trousers”, as some would say. There’s no sign whatsoever of UN Security Council Resolution 1860 or any of the mile-high stack of fine words being implemented, even though Britain and its friends, individually or collectively, have all the levers necessary to force Israel's compliance.

Dickens's Circumlocution Office is indeed alive and well and operating at full blast in London and other major centres in the West so as not to upset delinquent Israel and to make it appear that positive action, like sanctions, is not an option.

Palestinian Embassy infected by circumlocution bug

Even the Palestinian Embassy in London has caught the circumlocution bug, as shown in this statement by Ambassador Manuel Hassassian in response to the Al-Jazeera’s publication of leaked documents giving details of talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority:

Al Jazeera’s attempt to imitate WikiLeaks has propagated documents that allegedly were developed from our negotiations with Israel. Even if such documents are factual, they represent discussions of hypothetical scenarios with no concrete or absolute agreements. Concessions can only be made, and an agreement can only be reached, when signed and sealed through public referendum.

But some of these discussions focused on assets that were definitely not for discussion, not negotiable, not for sale and not up for referendum, did they not?

"Negotiations with Israel require considering and debating their point of view, their conditions and their agenda even if it’s at the far-right of one’s belief and position,” continues the ambassador.

Negotiating and challenging these does not mean conciliation on our side, but in fact, an understanding of the issues and obstacles that face us as an authority and governance under occupation. We have tried the path of overt defiance and no-negotiations with Israel which was explicated by the latter to delegitimize the Palestinians.

Knowing what the state of Israel seeks only brings us closer to understanding that only a viable solution for the Palestinian leadership is the key to stability in the region. If these documents are authentic then this scandal has served only to prove that Israel is no partner for peace.

“I am against law – international law in particular”

Elsewhere in the statement there’s this nugget of information:

The PNA’s [Palestine National Authority] position speaks for itself grounded in the principles of international law with the respect to the rights of the Palestinian people. In 2007, Israel’s then foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, said to the negotiators that she was against international law and insisted that it could not be included in terms for reference in the talk “I was the minister of justice,” she said, “But I am against law – international law in particular."

Knowing that the Israelis regard themselves to be above international law and that normal codes of conduct don’t apply, what was the point of the Palestinians sitting down to obviously futile negotiations in the first place?

If ever there was a need for regime change, this is it.The Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority, after putting off elections indefinitely, now sees the bravery and determination of Egypt’s freedom movement with alarm and promises local elections “soon” and a general election afterwards.

Hamas says it will boycott elections until a proper reconciliation is reached. Besides, many Hamas supporters in the West Bank have been rounded up by Fatah’s thugs, thrown in jail and probably been tortured. Furthermore barmy Fatah is calling for an uprising in Gaza against democratically-elected Hamas!

Given Fatah’s track record, who can trust them to organize fair elections or abide by the result if it goes against them?

The Washington Post reports:

For years ... US officials have engaged in back-channel talks with Egyptian members of the [Muslim Brotherhood] movement in recognition of its substantial popular support. The unofficial contacts have taken place sporadically since the 1990s but became more frequent after members of the Brotherhood were elected to the Egyptian Parliament in 2005. Afterward, US diplomats and lawmakers held several meetings with Brotherhood leaders... US officials justified the meetings by saying they were merely speaking with duly-elected members of the Egyptian legislature.

In which case the US has no excuse for refusing to talk with the Brotherhood’s offshoot, Hamas. Ditto Britain and the EU. Including Hamas at long last will speed reconciliation, which the West claims it wants to see.

But are Western powers brave enough – just half as brave as, say, a young Egyptian democracy campaigner in Tahrir Square – to do this off their own bat? Or will they have to run to Tel Aviv and ask permission?River toSeaUprooted Palestinian

It is a known fact that Zionists make illegitimate claims for anything they covet or consider expedient.

Aiming to discredit and alienate the Palestinian Resistance and Liberation Movement Hamas, the zionist hasbara and their perception management experts have indulged themselves in spreading sly poison, in particular the false claim that "Hamas and Hizbullah are Mossad creation" !

Those interested in Palestine undoubtedly notice the abundance of such materials and articles propagated by Zionist hasbara machine, and even by some supporters of Palestine. The subtle or not so subtle purpose is to affirm theZionist myths namely:

“Israel created Hamas, and Israel continues to arm Hamas”.

“Hamas is good for Israel"

"Hamas is a fanatical terrorist organisation that has nothing else to do but the craving for Israeli weapons to use them to terrorize and kill innocent people"

and "Hamas helps Israel by giving it the excuse and the pretext to attack Palestinians” ... etc.

Such preposterous allegations are an attempt to implicate, incriminate and accuse of treason and collaboration, the honourable legitimate resistance movements of liberation of Hamas and Hizbullah, by associating them with the fundamentally criminal nature of "Israel".

Hamas is a grass-rootResistance and Liberation Movement, it's creation was a natural, organic and inevitable outcome of brutal and unremitting occupation. it emerged as an offshoot from the Islamic Revival Movement "Muslim Brotherhood", sharing its values and moral foundations

The name Hamas is actually an acronym for "Haraket el Muqawama el Islamiah", meaning the Islamic Resistance Movement

Since 2006 Hamas is the democratically elected government in occupied Palestine.

Long before 2006, the gradual return to Islam by many Muslim youths had become one of the biggest thorns in the eyes of those who shape the ideological background of Zionists whether secular or religious, namely the Talmudist Jewish Rabbis. Their most prominent Talmudist Rabbi declared most explicitly the reason for the Rabbis' hateful animosity toward Hamas: namely Hamas' incorruptability. Why the Rebbe hates Islam?

Which is to say that the Talmudist Rabbis were the prime driving force influencing Western Governments to make anti-democratic, irrational and ominously counterproductive decisions regarding Hamas: to reject it, to collectively punish Palestinians for electing them, to smear and label them as “terrorists”, wage a covert war against them. Furthermore, the western support for, and collaboration with Israel's medieval practices of starving Palestinians in Gaza and of ruthless practices against all Palestinians, are also to be traced to Talmudic Rabbis and their supremacist and genocidal ideologies.

Unable to liberate themselves from the malevolent Zionist influence, Western countries indulged into placing autocratic puppet regimes in Arab countries, and engaged in endless wars against Arab, predominantly Muslim countries, causing unspeakable amount of devastation and deaths, as well as an irreversible deluge of justified anti-west, anti-American sentiments. Incidentally, these foolish war-mongering policies also destroyed the domestic economies and prosperity of the Western countries, impoverishing their respective populations, at rapid pace.

The events in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Jordan and perhaps beyond, indicate the logical, natural and organic consequence of the Western aggression, namely the entire Arab world apparently taking an irreversible path of liberation from the Western oppression and control.

No wonder then, that “Israel” with its global network of Zionist organizations, are bend on smearing, and recuperating movements like Hamas, Hezbollah, the Muslim Brotherhood, etc. Fortunately it is easy to deconstruct such inept manipulations. Too often though, such lies and spin is blindly accepted, without even the most elementary scrutiny.

For example the Zionist claim to have fathered them all, Hamas, Hezbollah, Muslim Brotherhood, you name it., claim to have financed and trained them, and whatever expedient lie is concocted then added for as much as you can gobble.

In the case of Hamas, to the best of my knowledge, the story of "Mossad financed and trained Hamas" is a concoction originated in Hasbara's poison kitchen, and there is of course no serious evidence justifying this ludicrous story. The story was to be made credible through “historian” Zeev Sternell, and was to be disseminated via Hassane Zerouky, whose publications in 2002-2004 gave momentum to this concoction.
Not only does it not hold up to even the lightest scrutiny, but it is an almost laughable story. Yet the story somehow stuck and keeps re-emerging once in a while. In essence the Sternell-Zerouky tandem just stretched that Zionists had estimated at some point that a movement like Hamas would be of machiavelic benefit to them to counteract the influence of secular Fath. They also stretched that the charity organizations of Hamas did receive foreign contribution. This is the extent of the "evidence" used to concoct this rubbish. From whatever angle one may look at it, it irrefutably does not amount to "financing" or "training" a group, let alone “creating” it as some have alleged.

Furthermore, Zerouky's publications always omit to present Hamas as an organization who mainly engaged in charitable and social work, but instead he misrepresents it as a group who " ...had built its strength through its various acts of sabotage of the peace process" and that Hamas was bent on "to prevent the creation of a Palestinian State" and almost amusingly that "... Hamas and Ariel Sharon, see eye to eye; they are exactly on the same wave length". Any one who babble such nonsense either have no idea what they are talking about or simply are stooges of zion

The only logical conclusion that could be drawn is that the Zionists at that pointdid not send its assassination squads, and did not sabotage the flow of money toward the Muslim Brotherhood-Hamas charities, because at the time, the existence of another political pole that might weaken Fatah was convenient for them. Again, by any stretch of imagination, this does not amount to "creating, financing or training" Hamas.

We are not naïve as to think that the mossad would not try to insert its eyes inside Hamas, but that by no means makes the whole legitimate movement tainted as some supporters might imply.

Vigilance against hasbara poison is essential; it protects the truth, by leaving intact and untainted honest and genuine freedom fighters. Occupied Palestine yearns for freedom, and thus needs a Liberation Movement with integrity, Hamas happen to be just that. (at least to me and to the majority of Palestinians who elected Hamas).

Friends, please be vigilant, do not fall into the trap of deception that aims at discrediting our genuine Islamic Resistance and Liberation Movement, at a time when the world has begun to open its eyes to the crimes of zion and to empathize with our just resistance.

Full liberation of Palestine is our goal.Those who walk with us only to hinder our liberation movement, to curtail our aspiration or to obfuscate the ugly reality of the supremacist genocidal nature of those who occupy our land are better advised to walk away… far.

Those who support that goal are welcome to join our march for freedom; we share with them our all what we have and embrace them with the hospitable loving heart of Palestine.

These flying stones may be a primitive weapon, but they are very effective in the right environment. Here the sky is very dangerous with Mubarak's thugs moving in with their aggressive violence, used to discredit and frighten the protesters.

Over the past week, the mainstream media has not done a good job of communicating how intense the violence and bloodshed in Egypt has become. Trucks and cars have been plowing into groups of protesters at high speed, dozens of protesters have been shot and killed, and the violence only seems to get more crazy with each passing day.

Seriously, if you cannot handle scenes of graphic violence and people dying, then you probably should not watch the videos posted below. These are 10 of the most shocking videos of the protests in Egypt, and they are incredibly graphic. This is a real revolution that is happening in Egypt and it is very bloody.

What you are about to see is what happens when society collapses. When violence and bloodshed erupt, suddenly life starts becoming very cheap. In a couple of the videos posted below, vehicles just plow right over protesters at full speed and the drivers just keep on going. It is absolutely unbelievable.

If it is not vehicles it is horses and camels ridden by pro Mubarak supporters (mostly plainsclothes police) riding tinto crowds hell bent on beating and hurting. They carry knives and as I posted the other day, machetes. Mubarak will go out on an extremely bad note for adopting these violent policies.

What is going to happen when American society eventually breaks down? These protesters are merely the beginning as the Rothschilds and their banking cabal fleece the people harder and harder until, like the Egyptians, they have nothing to lose by standing up and being counted. These actions are not confined to the Muslim world.

That is something to think about.

For now, there are some very important lessons about humanity that we can learn from what has been happening in Egypt. The videos posted below are so shocking and so graphic that many of you may find them very difficult to watch....

No matter what we in the West think, this is definitely war.

#1 In this first video, a fire truck runs right over a protester and doesn't even stop.

#2 In this next video, a vehicle steamrolls over an entire group of protesters and just keeps on going.

#3 In the following video, a vehicle plows through dozens of protesters at very high speed and the chaos that erupts afterwards is absolutely incredible.

#4 This next video contains raw footage of a protester being shot dead right in the middle of the street.

#5 The following video from RT shows the incredible chaos that erupted when a group of pro-Mubarak thugs riding horses and camels attacked a large gathering of anti-government protesters.

#6 If you do not want to see the footage of Anderson Cooper getting punched and beat up by protesters, then you are not going to want to watch this next video.

#7 If you do not like dead bodies, then you are not going to want to watch this next video which is filmed in several morgues.

#8 The following short video from RT contains a compilation of very disturbing raw footage from the protests of the last couple of days.

#9 In this next video you can almost feel the rage of the protesters as they hurl rocks at lines of police.

#10 Lastly, have you seen the video of the mysterious "ghost horseman" that was captured in mainstream news footage of the Egyptian protests? What in the world is this thing? Go to the 1:18 mark of the video posted below and watch it for yourself; for the life of me I cannot figure out what it is but it certainly is eerie.

If President Mubarak's support was representative of the population, you would have expected tens of thousands to come out in full force over the last week. But the ruling party hasn't been able to mobilize people. It isn't a lack of resources: it's simply that there are very few who would go out on a limb to defend them.

The regime's base is extremely shallow in comparison to the opposition, which represents an overwhelming majority of the population. The regime has alienated most of the rising social and political classes: centrists and democrats, leftists, nationalists, independent Islamists, and the Muslim Brotherhood. They're left with about 10 percent of the country, the uppermost echelon of the population.

It's a strategic alliance between the business class and the ruling elite, with the support of the state security apparatus, which numbers about a million people. Mubarak's allies hold the top cabinet positions, and his new Vice-President is a very close supporter. But outside that structure there is really no support at all.

There is one other ingredient in his support base that is less secure, and will probably prove the deciding factor: the military. There is no doubt that there are those in the top brass who believe in his politics, who believe in the status quo and stability. And as an institution, the army is calling the shots.

It, too, has people in the very highest echelons of the government; and Mubarak has a strong connection to the military thanks to his former position as chief of the air force, and over the past two decades he has co-opted scores of the senior officers who have a vast interest in the continuation of the regime. He has appealed to that loyalty in recent days, and the army still wants to find a face-saving formula. That is why they will not do as the Tunisian army did and abruptly force him out. This is an institution with a powerful memory.

Nonetheless, the situation is very far from secure for Mubarak. The army knows that the writing is on the wall: they are trying to assert control and find a formula for an honorable exit. But the moment they realize that the disadvantages of the status quo outweigh the advantages, they will say: you must give up power now.

The army finds itself under tremendous pressure, between the rock of its institutional instincts and interests and the hard place of public and international opinion, in particular now that even the Americans have come to the conclusion that Mubarak is a liability.

In the senior ranks, they are asking: how much damage have we incurred? Should we play for time, or assert control?

Equally, they know that junior officers and conscripts are not on the same page, being much closer in outlook - ideologically, socially, economically - to the people on the streets. The top brass are well aware that even if they decided to go all the way in support of Mubarak, they might not be able to get their juniors to follow orders.

That is the position as we reach today, the moment of truth. If huge crowds come out and try to march to the presidential palace, the army will be forced to make its decision. The balance of power seems to be in favor of the opposition. Today we will find out how far the army is willing to go to redress that.

The gas pipeline blast in north Sinai was caused by a gas leak, but some suspect sabotage. [AFP]

Investigation into explosion at a North Sinai pipeline that has crippled gas supplies to Jordan.
Last Modified: 05 Feb 2011 14:46 GMT

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The gas pipeline blast in north Sinai was caused by a gas leak, but some suspect sabotage. [AFP]

An explosion at a pipeline in Egypt that supplies gas to Jordan and Israel has been blamed on a gas leak, according to the country's natural gas company.

Earlier reports suggested that sabotage had been behind the blast on Saturday.

Magdy Toufik, the head of Egypt's natural gas company, said in a statement that the fire broke out "as a result of a small amount of gas leaking'' in the terminal at the pipeline that runs through the El-Arish area of Egypt's north Sinai.

However, a local security official said an explosive device was detonated inside the terminal, and the regional governor, Abdel Wahab Mabrouk, said he suspected sabotage.

Jordanian officials are scrambling to rearrange power supplies after the Jordanian route, that runs from El-Arish to Aqaba and then up to Amman, was damaged by the explosion.

It was reported that the gas pipeline running to Ashkelon in Israel has not been affected. There were no reports of any casualties as a result of the blast.

The governor of Sinai told Al Jazeera that the fire that resulted from the explosion of the gas supply line had been controlled and that the infrastructiure at the gas terminal had not been severely damaged.

"The armed forces and the authorities managed to close the main the source of flow and are trying to control the fires," a source said.

The explosion affected Jordan's gas supplies.

Economic strain

The explosion affected Jordan's gas supplies.

Al Jazeera's Nisreen El-Shamayleh, reporting from Amman, said regardless of the cause of the blast, the result was a strain on the Jordanian economy at a very difficult time.

She said the blast is likely to cost Jordan around $4m a day, at a time when the country is trying to implement economic and political reforms.

Jordan does not have any of its own reserves and currently gets all of its gas from Egypt.

Egypt stopped pumping gas to Jordan following the explosion, Ghaleb Al Maabreh, the head of Jordan's national electricity company, told Al Jazeera.

"All power plants in Jordan are having to operate on burning fuel oil and diesel in order to provide the country with electricity," Maabreh told our correspondent.

Egyptian authorities have promised to repair the pipeline within a week.

Jordan only has oil and gas reserves to last around three weeks, but they have called the current situation manageable, El-Shamayleh said.

'Saboteurs'

Earlier on Saturday, Egyptian state television reported that "saboteurs took advantage of the security situation and blew up the gas pipeline," adding that there had been a big explosion.

Residents in the area also reported a huge explosion and said flames were raging in the area.

The security presence in the Sinai province is very light.

According to Al Jazeera's sources, eyewitnesses are being interviewed by authorities and the investigation is focusing on some bedouin tribes of Northern Sinai.

Bedouin tribesmen of the Sinai Peninsula attempted to blow up the pipeline last July as tensions intensified between them and the Egyptian government, which they accuse of discrimination and of ignoring their plight.

"They do not enjoy the wealth that the state generates from the Sinai peninsula, the money has not benefitted the communities there," Al Jazeera's correspondent in Egypt said.

"The issue of security is often used in Egyptian politics but many Egyptians say that the tensions inside Egypt have been because of the government itself.

"Bedouins, arms trade and drug trafficking are some of the internal issues that the central government in Cairo has failed to deal with," our correspondent said.

The gas supplies from Egypt also account for 40 per cent of Israel's gas imports.

Although the gas supply route to Israel has not been affected by the explosion, Israeli authorities remain concerned as the events have been unfolding in Egypt over the last few days.

Al Jazeera's Tony Birtley, reporting from Jerusalem, said that "Israelis have been very jittery for the last 10 days, if a government comes into power in Egypt that is not sympathetic to Israel then it will present security issues for Israel".

"Israel is realising that their good friend [Mubarak] is on his way out, and they are not sure who is on the way in," he said.

It is difficult to overstate the potential for Egyptian citizens advancing universal aspirations for freedom, dignity and basic human rights now spreading from the determination of those who for more than a week have risked their lives while inspiring much of the World at Cairo’s Tahrir (“Liberation”) Square. Tahrir public plaza near central Cairo has been the traditional site for numerous major protests and demonstrations over the years, including during the 1977 Egyptian Bread Riots and the March 2003 protests against the American war in Iraq.

Washington DC and Tel Aviv are reportedly shocked by the rapidly unfolding and unpredictable revolution.

One can quickly recall a long list of geographic place names that are indelibly etched in the annals of humanity’s quest for freedom and whose very geographical place name connotes resistance to aggression, oppression, occupation and tyranny. Names like Le Place de la Resistance, Tiananmen Square, the Gdansk Shipyards, Bunker Hill, Iran’s Azadi Square, Bogside, Martyr’s Square, Karbala, Aita Shaab, among scores of others. Tahrir Square has become a name symbolizing every people’s willingness, indeed insistence, to make personal, potentially life taking sacrifices to achieve freedom from an illegitimate, corrupt, brutal, treasonous dictatorship or from occupiers or aggressors.

Less than one week after few outside Egypt had heard of, or much less could locate on a blank map of Cairo, “Tahrir Square” the World now realizes it as the epicenter of the Middle East’s unfolding and unpredictable earthquake event.

The Tahrir Square uprising has led to one Arab diplomat, currently posted to Beirut, observing yesterday: “If there were to be an Arab League meeting this week attended by all the Arab Heads to State, an honest participate might tell the assembled potentates to look to their right and then look to their left and realize that in perhaps 24 months close one third may not be attending subsequent Arab League summits.

The Tahrir uprising may, following a cursory examination, appear unconnected with much outside the Egyptian public's urgent longings to escape poverty, unemployment, lack of educational opportunities, caused by decades of regime economic mismanagement, police brutality and government torture chambers, and pervasive corruption that has seeped into nearly every aspect of Egyptian life. But increasingly it appears that other forces are influencing recent events, noted below.

The eyes, hope and solidarity of much of the Middle East are on Tahrir Square and the bloodied but unbowed Egyptian people, who, old and young, religious and secular, illiterates and lettered, paupers and moneyed all of whom today, following upon the glow of a spontaneous intifada in the cradle of civilization stand to win or lose so much for the region.

As the Mubarak regime plots a path for the beleaguered President to stay in power it is employing the well tested bromide of most despots including citing the need for stability, orderly transition, prevention of religious fanatics and extremists from taking over and the need for fighting “terrorism.” The pro-Mubarak Egyptian daily Al-Yawm Al-Sabah is claiming that Hamas is behind much of the instigation to violence in Tahriri Square and other areas of the country.

Not buying all of these scare tactics, the Obama Administration’s is reviving up its “now means three days ago and counting” demands. Mr. Mubarak told CNN on 2/3/11 that he’s fed up and would like nothing better than to step down, but chaos and the Muslim Brotherhood would surely follow. His closest political confident and just appointed Vice-President Omar Suleiman also predicted chaos if Mr. Mubarak resigned, saying it would leave a body without a head.

The White House is still leaning toward Omar Suleiman but believes that Suleiman was aware of the campaign in recent days to intimidate the opposition, and are staffers are wondering whether he is still an acceptable choice.

Late word from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is that the Obama Administration may support Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa, who has joined anti-Mubarak protests in Tahrir Square, and is hinting he may run for president in the upcoming election. Israel would support him over Mohammad al Baradei who many view as pro-Iranian.

Still, the Mubarak regime is not without supporters. Former Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer has defended Egyptian President Hosni Mubrak, saying his collapse will be a “tremendous loss” for Israel. The former army general praised Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak for supporting Israel for thirty years, Israel's Arutz Sheva newspaper reported. “When I watched his speech in which he said he would step down, it pained me to see his collapse," Ben-Eliezer said on 2/2/11 about Mubarak.

Both Washington and Tel Aviv were reported shocked by the speed of the Egyptian revolt and their intelligences agencies admit not seeing it coming. Much of the American reaction is being scripted by AIPAC and other Israel lobby agents who regularly contribute campaign cash to 90 percent of the US Congress, including 390 of the 435 Members of the House of Representative (89.7%) who voted to support Israel after it committed repeatedly condemned serial murders of innocent civilians and myriad crimes against humanity in Gaza.These Israeli pushed “American” initiatives will likely range from possibly terminating aid to Lebanon (some Obama Administration friends of Israel claim there is a link between the South Beirut Hezbollah neighborhood of Dahiyeh and Cairo’s Tahir Square events) and cutting off Egypt nearly 30 years of annual multi-billion dollar cash grants as well as massive military hardware.

The US-Israel imperative appears designed to immediately regain control and co-opt the Tahrir uprising and quickly channel the uprising into a political cul de sac until Egypt can be returned to “normal”, meaning US-Israel shared hegemony.

What will ultimately determine in which ways the Middle East moves following Tahrir Square events is not the armed might of the regional super power or the weapons of the global superpower.Both Israel and the US can have a short term impactbut the former is shakingwhile the latter, equally impotent to subdue 83 million Egyptians and perhaps soon millions of Palestinians, Jordanians, Yemenis and others, are trying to stall any major regime change in favor of cosmetic adjustments to the current government.

Even the Obama Administrations current public choice, Omar Sulieman is meeting with increasing resistance in Washington as details of his CV emerged including being a torture specialist and possibly a Mossad agent.

What both Israel and the US fear most is a determined and successful grass roots movement than will liberate Palestine from Israeli occupation.

The Obama administration can be expected to continue to temporize events as best it can while calculating how to insert its choice of a compliant President in Mubarak’s palace. As one Congressional commented by email: “The last thing the White House or Israel want is an Egyptian Chavez, or even someone like Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Completely unacceptable would be anyone with even the hint of pro-Iranian or Hezbollah leanings. The State Department favors another strong man, with an essentially rubber stamp Parliament after “free elections” (as long as there are no troublesome Algerian, Gaza, or Lebanon style election results. The US-Israel bottom line is that Egypt’s next government must be one that will guarantee that the 1979 Camp David Accords and Egypt’s willingness to continue accepting a total of more than three billions in US taxpayer dollars annually as bribe money to collaborate with Israel against Palestine.)

History is filled with ironies. One of them is the coincidence that two of the fundamental causes of the unfolding Egyptian revolution happened within months of each other both 30 years ago— soon to be followed by the beginning of the current Mubarak dictatorship---the Islamic Revolution in Iran and the US sponsored Camp David Accords. The Camp David giveaway and cave-in to colonialist Israel was never accepted by the Egyptian people, by the Islamic Republic, or by any but a small percentage of the people of the Middle East.

The hegemonic objectives of the 1979 Camp David have rolled across the region for three decades, being rejected and increasingly confronted by a growing culture of Resistance set in motion with the 1979 Imam Khomeini led revolution. Both 1979 events fueled myriad other more immediate causes including those noted above and significantly inspired the current Egyptian eruptions, some of the paths of which are predictable while the results are unknown.

There are many other Tahrir Squares in the Middle East.

One of which is Al Aksa square in Jerusalem,the eternal and indivisible capital of Palestine. It remains to be seen when or if Palestinians will revive Jerusalem as a modern day resistance place name and whether like Tahrir Square, Egypt, Jerusalem will rise up in support of increasing cries for Palestinian liberation as the inspiration and revolution of their neighbors in Tahrir Square spreads.

Franklin Lamb is doing research in Lebanon and is reachable c/o fplamb@gmail.com